Jackson teachers selected for NASA internship, experience will help students become better scientists

Published June 14, 2012 at 12:00 am

Dee McLellan and Sarah Garrett, instructors at Jackson Middle School (JMS), A Specialty School for Math and Science, have been selected for a teacher/planetarium internship and curriculum development at National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

McLellan and Garrett will spend a week at Goddard in July. From then until the spring of 2013, they will work on lesson/planetarium program development. A formal evaluation of their lessons will take place and the unit will be completed in August 2013.

The instructors will help develop a series of inquiry-based classroom activities and an interactive, inquiry-driven planetarium program about NASA Earth science. At Goddard, they will work directly with NASA scientists and education professionals to determine the content of the lessons. The lessons will be part of a series of five units that cover atmospheric composition, climate change, water and energy cycles, carbon cycle and ecosystems, and Earth-Sun interactions. The units developed in 2012 will be focused on the carbon cycle and ecosystems and climate change and variability.